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From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Lake, Celinda (b. 1953)

Among the nation’s foremost experts on electing women to public office, Celinda Lake made her reputation specializing in pro-choice Democratic women and groups. Her clients include U.S. Senators Carol Mosely-Braun, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu, Washington Governor Gary Locke, EMILY’s List, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Debbie Stabenow; Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign, and the PEW Foundation, among others.

Photo courtesy of Celinda Lake

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Lake “worked with innovative message projects that helped redefine language on the economy, inequality, big money in politics, climate change, public schools, teachers, and cominal-justice reform.”

Born in Bozeman, Montana, to a Republican family, Lake’s interests in politics led her to attend a Republican summer camp when she was a teenager. In her freshman year at Smith College, she worked for Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. By her junior year in college, she realized that her views had changed and she became a Democrat.

While spending her junior year in college in Switzerland, Lake met a group of Americans conducting research on voting behavior and discovered survey research. After graduating from Smith College in 1975, Lake earned her master’s degree at the University of Michigan in 1980, examining gender differences in voting for her thesis. Her reason for choosing polling as her profession, she wrote, is “Love of politics and desire to listen to people and know how they think.”

In 1996, Lake predicted that a woman would be president in the next 16 years.

She is the co-author of Public Opinion Polling: A Handbook for Public Interest and Citizen Advocacy Groups (1987) and What Women Really Want: How American Women are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live (2005).

See also: EMILY’s List

References: “Celinda Lake,” http://www.lakeresearch.com/people/president.asp (Accessed July 25, 2012); “Celinda Lake,” https://www.thenation.com/authors/celinda-lake (Accessed April 5, 2019); Kurtz, “Capitol Gains,” Working Woman17 (February 1992): 66-69; Lake, “What Do Women Want?” in Neuman, ed., True to Ourselves: A Celebration of Women Making a Difference (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998): 171-181; “Movers and Shakers,” Campaigns & Elections, September 1996: 14.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Lake, Celinda (b. 1953)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0543.
APA 7th
Lake, Celinda (b. 1953). From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0543.
CMOS 17th
"Lake, Celinda (b. 1953)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0543.